Brent Kuhlman

+ Jesu Juva +

Romans 6:3-9

What’s certain and sure – and most comforting -- is what the Lord promises, does, and graciously gives.  So Jesus goes and does a very good, Good Friday.  God is great as He dies as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  Numbered with the transgressors.  Laid on Him is the iniquity of us all.  For you, me, and Angie. 

Jesus redeemed you, me and Angie, lost and condemned persons.  Purchased and won us from all sin, death and the power of the devil.  Not with gold or silver.  But with His holy precious blood and His innocent suffering and death.  What a Lord!

Jesus lorded His death over Angie.  It all started when Rex and Evelyn brought her to Holy Baptism in 1966.  There Jesus put His Name on Angie.  That’s huge all by itself!    Where God’s name is there is life and salvation.  It’s one of His greatest gifts.  But that’s another sermon I’ll save for another day. 

Tonight it’s the Romans 6 text.  It tells of the Lord’s doing.  His giving.  What Angie was given.  Applied and promised to her was the most certain and most sure death destroying and sin removing Mount Calvary death of Jesus Himself.  Listen again:  “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?”

Baptized into His death!  Christ’s death.  His Good Friday Savior of the world death.  What a magnificent gift from the Lord Jesus.  Jesus took Angie into His death in the water of Holy Baptism.  What He did counted for her there.  She’s always been safe and secure then in Christ’s death. “For one who has died has been set free from sin.”  Set free from sin – that’s forgiveness.   And where there's forgiveness there is LIFE and SALVATION.

That’s precisely why Angie’s resurrection from the dead is certain and sure.  Listen again to the text:  “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”   “Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.”  

Put quite simply:  "the power, effect, benefit, fruit, and purpose of baptism is that it saves,” (Large Catechism IV, 459:24).  It saves because through it Jesus applies the benefits of His atoning death.  “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved,” Jesus clearly promises (Mark 16:16).   Baptism is “the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit,” says the blessed apostle Paul (Titus 3:5).  Peter says in Acts 2:38 that Baptism is for the forgiveness of sins and that it gives the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Now wonder then that Peter writes in 1 Peter 3:21, “Baptism now saves you . . . through the resurrection of Jesus.”  

What’s certain and sure is what the Lord graciously promises, does, and gives.  And so in Holy Baptism we “always have enough to do to believe firmly what baptism promises and brings – victory over death and the devil, forgiveness of sin, God’s grace, the entire Christ, and the Holy Spirit with his gifts,” (Large Catechism IV, 461:41).  “In baptism there is brought, free of charge,” to Angie and to you, the “medicine that swallows up death and keeps all people alive,” (IV, 462:43, emphasis added). “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?”

In the Name of Jesus.  Amen.